The Graduate Program in Experimental Psychology is to advance psychological science by promoting excellence and productivity in research and graduate training in areas broadly defined as behavioral neuroscience, cognitive neuroscience, cognitive psychology, and developmental psychology. In pursuing this mission, the program emphasizes the integration, both realized and potential, of these areas in scientific study of behavior and cognition.
Research in behavioral neuroscience is conducted in newly renovated laboratory and animal space. Graduate students will have access to state-of-the-art techniques including confocal microscopy, stereology, automatic video tracking of animal behavior, and stereotaxic surgery on adult and neonatal rats and utilize animal models of cocaine-exposed infants, Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, infants exposed to the AIDS virus, and epilepsy. Research areas focus on neurodevelopmental disorders, drug abuse, gene transfer, recovery of function, spatial learning and memory, and gender differences.
Research in cognitive neuroscience has focused on the field of attention, both during development and in adulthood, and spatial and cognitive functioning. In addition, studies examining the cognitive neuroscience of deception are also conducted. Approaches to the various research questions in this area have utilized case studies involving brain-damaged patients, neuropsychological testing in various populations including children exposed to chemotherapy and people with attention deficit disorder, recording of both EEG and ERPs using a high density recording system 128 electrode recording system, and fMRI.
The cognitive psychology specialization within the Experimental Psychology Program explores the nature of cognitive representations and cognitive processes guiding thought and action. The research interests of the current cognitive faculty include judgment and decision making processes, reading and related processes, psycholinguistics, language processing, spatial cognition, and cognitive aging. Supporting the cognitive specialization are faculty members who have strong cognitive neuroscience interests, with research focusing on perceptual processes, attention-related processes, and the brain basis of behavior. The research in both cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience areas is aided by eye tracking equipment, EEG equipment, and computer labs.
The Experimental Program offers training in several specialties within Developmental Psychology, including cognitive development in infancy, childhood, and adulthood and social-emotional development in adulthood and aging. Activities within developmental labs reflect a diversity of empirical approaches, including laboratory experimentation, field experimentation and observational study, and interview- and questionnaire-based assessment. Currently, faculty members are focusing their research on conceptual development in infancy, spatial memory and wayfinding in children, and attachment style in adulthood. Students with developmental interests also have opportunities to link with other research areas. Within the program, faculty members in Cognitive and Behavioral Neuroscience are examining the cognitive developmental neuroscience of attention and the effects of prenatal exposure to psychoactive drugs, and faculty members within Cognitive Psychology are studying reading, language comprehension, and concept formation. In applied doctoral training programs in Psychology, faculty members are studying child neuropsychology, cognitive assessment, academic achievement, children's well-being, and adult relationships.
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